Previews

I-Ninja

A cute ninja and a lot of action help this one stand out from the platformer pack.

Spiffy:

Quite playable; a wide variety of well-integrated play mechanics.

Iffy:

Ninja himself; lack of gameplay focus; average aesthetics.

Like the company's somewhat misguided Xbox party fighter Kung Fu Chaos, Argonaut's I-Ninja is one of those faux-Asian or anime games that European developers are so fond of making these days. The titular Ninja himself seems more like a character more destined for company whiteboards than a game, yet here we are.

Likewise, the story for I-Ninja is about as nonsensical as game stories come. The story opens with the evil O-dor and his army of robotic Ranx ... get it? Anyway, O-dor is after the mystical rage stones, jewels filled with crystalline rage. Grasping one, Ninja accidentally beheads his sensei, and realizing the power they would have in O-dor's hands, sets out with his angry sensei's ghost to get the rest. Ninja is goofy, hyperactive, loud-mouthed, and has a short attention span ... the perfect character for this particular game, it turns out.

I-Ninja is one of those "all things to all people, forever" sort of games, but succeeds in part because it's lite and doesn't take itself seriously at all. This big-headed Ninja has a number of moves at his disposal, all expertly explained by sensei's in-game tutorials. In addition to running, jumping, and slashing, Ninja can run along walls, hover by spinning his katana, and swing from hooks with his grappling chain. Along the way he'll also gain access to a number of "rage" powers, such as a healing spell, and standard issue ninja equipment, such as ricocheting shuriken, snipe-enabling blowdarts, and more powerful swords.

The enemy ninjas must be lacking something since they have big swords.

From here I-Ninja follows a typical 3D platformer approach, in which Ninja is tossed into a hub from which he can access a variety of linear levels. At the end of each level is a "grade," an emblem that allows Ninja to ascend to the next belt when enough are collected -- ninjutsu belts are exactly like those of karate, it would seem. As Ninja's belt changes colors, he'll be able to overcome like-colored force fields blocking the entrances to other levels and boss battles.

I-Ninja tries its hardest to capitalize on the freedom created by 3D games by seamlessly integrating as many play styles in one game as possible. In addition to platformer, there's hack-n-slash action, Sonic-like speed and rail-grinding, Super Monkey Ball-ery, first-person robot boxing and shooting ... and those are just in the first two worlds.

In another homage to anime, there are amusing mid-air battles as well, replete with those swooshing scrolling action lines that are all the rage these days in cartoons. Last year's lamentable hybrid action platformer Haven (and this year's slightly less lamentable Jak II) features this sort of lack of focus. I-Ninja seems to buck this trend. The levels are fairly linear and well-designed, and the various game styles are surprisingly polished and entertaining -- impressive considering how many of them there are.

Control cool mechs that fire sonic beams.

Unfortunately, I-Ninja's aesthetics don't appear to be anything to get excited about. The game is going for a clean and simple look somewhere between that of Mario Sunshine and the now-ubiquitous cel-shading technique. While the worlds aren't particularly great to look at, Ninja and his animations are great, many featuring little ninja flourishes, such as handstands when climbing up an edge. While the enemies die too quickly to get a lot of screen time, they splat, slice, and peel into halves nicely. While this is all ground that has been broken many times before, it all comes together.

So far, I-Ninja is one of the few games that begs to be played despite its character, story, world, graphics, or lack of focus. There's a lot here that goes against the grain, but so far the game seems playable enough to overcome all of that. It's a pretty rare thing to find a game so focused on gameplay these days, but we'll take it.